Tissue engineering via 3-D biomaterial dispenser-based precision deposition is a fast-evolving technology that has gone from provocative science fiction to the realization of 3-D “bioprinted” functional organ slivers in just a little over a decade. For simplicity, as used herein “bio-printing” refers broadly to any biomaterial dispensing technology utilizing three-dimensional, precise deposition of biomaterials via methodology that is compatible with an automated, computer-aided, three-dimensional prototyping device (a bioprinter). Computer assisted design (CAD)-facilitated 3-D bioprinters are now available as retail products, and companies engaged in commercializing bioprinters and bio-printed products are publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange. The rapid growth in the 3-D tissue engineering industry is in large part due to a demand for transplantable organs and organ repair tissues that is increasing at a faster rate than the supply. Hence, the prospect for urgent time-frame, large volume fabrication of synthetic biological constructs, including functional tissues and organs, has wide-spread appeal and has achieved significant private and government resource commitment.
Bioprinting and bioprinters have advanced significantly in recent years; however a stand-alone bioprinter still has very little useful functionality. End-users must often develop their own software and set up suitable workstations—tasks requiring expertise in computer-assisted-design, electronics and related materials engineering, as well as in the relevant biological science. Hence, without resources for and access to a team of experts, designing and bioprinting biological constructs such as tissues and organs remains the province of large well-funded research organizations and entities.
Conventional tissue engineering systems based on bioprinting technologies also typically require large work spaces because design, printing and assembly are typically effectuated on different platforms.
State-of-the-art bioprinters offer a wide variety of functionality, in particular at the dispensing end, where consumers may choose from single to multi nozzle print heads and from a wide range of biomaterial dispensing mechanisms. Contact-based deposition techniques such as soft lithography and non-contact based deposition techniques such as pressure-actuated ink jetting and laser-guided direct writing, have all been exploited in bioprinter design. Most bioprinters, however, rely on movement of the print head along three axes, which achieves precise deposition in two dimensional planar coordinates, but which limits building complex tissue and organ constructs to a layer-by-layer protocol, resulting in build support complications and other build challenges in multi-tissue constructs.
There remains a need for a technologically comprehensive tissue design and fabrication workstation fully integrated with tissue modeling and operational software to provide user-friendly functionality for CAD-assisted tissue engineering, and a need for workstation designs which achieve modeling, fabrication and assembly in a more compact work space. Further, there remains a need for bioprinter designs that provide greater flexibility in build protocols.